The Dobbs Decision

 Yesterday's Dobbs Decision was clearly one of the most decisive, significant legal/political events of my 75 years. It was an intelligent, clear, courageous action on the part of the five judges. In my intellect and will I rejoiced: I am proud of the judges and of the pro-life movement of the last five decades; I give due credit to Trump. 

But emotionally I was not jubilant. I did not celebrate, did not talk to people about it. I was sad because of the reaction to it by about half our country.

In the residences I run for women, perhaps half of our ladies have had abortions. Almost all of them are liberal Democrats and pro-choice. I dare not mention the decision.

Among my family and close friends at least half are liberal Democrat and consistently vote pro-choice, although they profess to be pro-life. I dare not mention the decision. 

Two weeks ago Judge Amy Coney Barrett, with her family, visited  my daughter's house for a barbeque. The connection had to do with her Downs Syndrome son. The visit was enjoyable, down-to-earth, ordinary and interesting. When I mention this to liberal friends, very good people who are serious in their Catholic faith, there is a cold, even frigid air that descends. 

Last night watching the news I became more downcast. The rage against the ruling has a ferocious, demonic quality to it. It is encouraged by "Catholics" Biden and Pelosi. It is widespread. It is self-righteous, furious, unrestrained, and entirely untroubled by the life of the little, powerless, dependent one. 

Where I live and work, most people are Democrat and pro-legal-abortion. These are people I love and respect. But the moral gulf between us is immense. I am most of the time a stranger in a strange land, although this is never mentioned. 

Our country is hopelessly polarized: we really are, morally, two distinct moral cultures.

I hold in contempt the decision of Chief Justice Roberts to straddle the issue: to uphold the Mississippi law and yet support Roe. I have more respect for the three liberal judges who are clear and firm in their decision. There are hard binaries! the fetus has a right to life or it does not. There is no compromise here, no moderate position, no half-way measure. Roberts sees himself as the great reconciler, keeping the peace by upholding precedent. He is indecisive and lukewarm. He has handed the court over to the clear thinking, decisive five.

The refusal of Biden and the DOJ to protect the families of Kavanaugh, Barrett and the others is simply nauseating. Despicable! 

It is a better world with Roe in the garbage pile. The abortion decision returns to democratic procedures where it belongs. The Culture War will largely move to the swing states. On the federal level we should get some reprieve. The hysterics of the Left will eventually exhaust themselves. We still have, in our nation, substantial sobriety, moral integrity, intelligence and justice...in these five justices. These are grounds for gratitude and hope.

But in my lived world there remains the intractable cloud of moral decadence. It is a great sadness!

Sex, for Angimals, Is Never Only About Sex: Letter (6) to My Teen Grandchildren

Personal Note. Thursday we celebrated the birthday of St. John the Baptist, the "voice" in the desert pointing to his cousin, the Word of God, Jesus. Your world is filled with a cacophony of voices, many discordant, disruptive and deceptive. My own lifelong intention has been to be a "catechist" or a "voice". The word "catechist" means "echo"...to echo the voice of Christ, in one's own unique circumstances and person. More than anything I want to share my faith, my voice, with my own blood. 

Angimals: Sexual Spirits

Angels, as pure spirits, have no bodies, no gender, no sexuality. Simple! Must be nice!

Animals have sex but it is very simple for them. They are "born that way." Their "sexual orientation" is hardwired into them at birth and springs into action automatically after a short period of maturation. They simply follow their urges, copulate, and reproduce. No meaning, freedom, decision, intimacy, culture, shame, guilt, loyalty, virginity, fidelity, betrayal, jealousy, vow, lust, covetousness, chastity or consecration! No drama! No sin! No freedom! No glory!

For humans, both spirit and material and therefore angimal (I got this word from Christopher West), it is infinitely more complex, dramatic, dense, mysterious, glorious, dangerous, and treacherous. We might also call ourselves "sexual spirits": our sexuality, masculinity and femininity in relation to each other, is the manner in which we express our spirit as reception, gratitude, freedom, truth, love, intelligence, self-donation, communion with each other and with the Trinity. Or, our sexuality expresses hatred, violence, suspicion, disobedience, manipulation, seduction, deceit,  hopelessness and despair. Drama, understood as the encounter between freedoms, is at the heart of our sexuality.

Human sexuality is the convergence of four levels of existence:

1. Biological: Our natural sexuality resembles that of animals but matures slowly, emerging after 12 years of life, and so is vastly more pliable and infused, for better or for worst, with the following.

2. Cultural: We are shaped in every way by our culture. Without the fixed, frozen instincts of the animal kingdom, we are "mimetic" ("we imitate") to the core: looking and imitating what we see around us. 

3. Psychological: All our important developmental events impact our personality and therefore our sexuality, especially interaction with parent figures, siblings, friends, traumas, wholesome-or-toxic nurture and relationships.

4. Moral: The decisions we make, given our received biological-cultural-psychological endowment, give moral orientation to our sexuality.

5. Spiritual: We are created to image the holy Trinity, a community of love, and therefore manifest through our masculinity/femininity, in all our relationships: reception, self-donation, truth, love, freedom, and purity. In an unsurpassed Drama, however, the Enemy contrives to destroy this image.

Cultural

Without fixed animal instincts, we are entirely "mimetic" in that we imitate the behavior, the culture, we see around us. We are largely, but not entirely, the products of our human environments. Even when we react against something around us that itself can be an inverse-mimesis: I reject my father's alcoholism and never drink; in reaction to my mother's passivity I become aggressive. It is a great blessing to live under the influence of those who are (although imperfectly) chaste sexually and faithful to their marriage or religious vows. Unfortunately, in the last 50 years, since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, our society has widely degenerated into sexual decadence in many ways. 

Psychological

When your sexuality explodes within you at puberty (move violently for boys), it is not an innate, fixed animal instinct that emerges. Rather, your sexual yearnings are infused with the curses and blessings of your entire personal history. A girl who never experienced a father's love may, in her desperation for masculine love, become promiscuous; or, on the other hand, suspicious of men, become lesbian. A boy who is sexually abused by a man may become himself a pedophile. A child who has been protected, cherished and loved by mother-and-father figures is more prone to be confident in gender-self-esteem, generous, trusting, tender and reverent to the opposite sex.

There is a vast range of tendencies or attractions that emerge, even in the same person. On the scale from worst to best we have, first, the blatant pathologies. Sadism, masochism, pedophilia, vicious misogyny and other severe disorders all arise usually from trauma, abuse and neglect. 

Second we might consider a litany of sexual addictions: pornography, especially on the internet, is surely the most pervasive but that can lead to prostitution, promiscuity, and other. 

Third are the "normal" temptations and urges from our fallen nature. These result from "concupiscence" which is the disordered desire we all (excepting Jesus and Mary) have in our sexuality. This comes to us from the original sin of Adam and Eve but more proximately from our own personal emotional history.  Even the great saints were afflicted with burning temptations to unchastity as fornication, adultery, and other. 

Fourth, we have the wholesome longings and urges: for intimacy, companionship, generosity, nurture, protection and purpose. 

Last are the genuinely holy longings to give fully, to spouse/family or religious/priestly life to our Lord who gave himself fully to us on the cross.

Moral

The moral involves the intellectual determination about right and wrong, the act of the will about what to do, and the decision of one's identity. For example, a woman in poverty and distress may consider prostitution wrong but decide to do so out of necessity. These acts are compelled by necessity so she maintains a correct, if troubled, conscience and does not deeply self-identify with the profession.

Likewise, a teenager with homosexual attractions has a variety of moral options. Homosexuality itself, as attraction to the same sex, is not a sin; it is a suffering, especially of loneliness, a cross to be born, a temptation, an ordinary example of the concupiscence we all share. If a practicing Catholic, he might accept the Church's teaching, receive his condition as a cross, and set himself to live a chaste single life. If his attraction is not "deep seated" (meaning at least that he is free of compulsion, capable of celibacy, not self-identifying as gay), the priesthood is not entirely ruled out. Or, agreeing with the Church, he might nevertheless practice the lifestyle, under compulsion, with a troubled conscience, hoping and praying for release from the addiction and a return to the serenity of chastity and sexual sobriety. In this search he might find support in Courage (a wholesome Catholic support group for homosexuals seeking to live chastely), and/or Sexaholics Anonymous (12-step program with a strict definition of sexual sobriety), and/or reparative therapy (a Catholic-friendly approach which seeks to heal underlying wounds but does not attempt "conversion of orientation" in the manner of problematic, fundamentalist practices.) If he is somewhat bi-sexual (attracted to men and women), he might succeed as husband and father. He might lead a double life, accepting the Christian view in public but privately disobeying it, as did some Catholic priests so scandalously. 

Or he might decide (1)  that these acts are morally good (2) that he will feel free to practice them and (3) that his identity is deeply, personally engaged in this life style.  If he decides affirmatively on these three questions, he freely embraces a gay identity. He will, of course, hate the Catholic teaching (sex is conjugal or unitive/fruitful) as misguided, homophobic, shaming, toxic and possibly hateful. Support for the LBGTQ agenda is thus contradictory of the Catholic view of chastity, of the 6th-9th commandments, and our way of life.

Spiritual

The common beliefs that "I was born gay" or "God made me gay" are inaccurate. A human ("angimal") sexual posture...gay, celibate, pedophile, consecrated virgin, devoted wife, polygamist, rapist, chaste bachelor, co-habitor, loyal husband...is not created or given at birth in the way of animal instincts. It comes from a dramatic history...of events, blessings, encounters, traumas, decisions, engagements, confrontations, surrenders. No doubt there is a predisposition already at birth; but those are shaped by the life experience within a culture. They are directed by free choice, involving a moral/intellectual judgement and life-shaping decisions about actions, participation and identity.

Last but not least we must consider that within this drama and history, at work as well is the hidden hand of God, and of Lucifer.  Whatever tendencies and circumstances, there are two spiritual plans for your sexuality: that of God and that of the Enemy. For each of us there are finally two spiritual orientations: to chastity and fidelity; and to selfishness, manipulation, and objectivation of the other. 

As Catholics, we participate in the Church as the "Bride of Christ." Jesus himself had no wife; but he gave himself to us all on the cross to make us holy and pure, his very bride, his very body. Receiving this gift of his life, his Spirit, his body and blood, from the cross, we have the urge to give ourselves in return, fully, in a vow. Such a vow takes two forms, the "states of life": marriage/family or the religious/priestly life of celibacy/virginity. In both of these there is a total giving. The single life is a preparation or waiting for that decisive event. Some of us for various reasons never make that vow. It is my view that such a single life is in effect, if without deliberate choice, a form of the religious life if accepted humbly, gratefully, generously. Both states of life, however, require the same interior form: chastity and fidelity.

The Spiritual Battle

Chastity is the primary arena of combat in the Great War against the Dragon. Arrayed against our purity is a great triumvirate of evil: the world, the flesh and the devil.

The "world" (organized against God, not the world created and redeemed by God) in which we live is dominated by Cultural Liberalism which has ripped sexuality out of its home within marriage/family and set it loose, chaotically and violently, into the anarchy of misogyny, pornography, promiscuity, infidelity, and self-satisfaction. We have here an entire empire organized in defiance of God and his intentions for chastity and fidelity. It is all around us, in the very air we breathe. Abortion, the genocide of the unborn, is the furious, futile defense against the chaos unleased by sexual license. 

Our flesh is weak, wounded, and vulnerable as a result of sin. Our greatest vulnerability is in our sexuality because that pervades our personality, reaches to the depths of heart and soul, is the way in which we are meant to image God, the deepest expression of intimacy, and the path divinely intended for the creation of new souls. Mysteriously infused in our sexuality are all our longings, wounds, traumas, resentments, frustrations, anxieties, and insecurities. It is our Achilles heal. It is the locus of our heart ache, loneliness, sadness. It is, in God's grace, our glory!

Lucifer, the devil, the most intelligent of God's creatures, is aware of our weakness and firmly in control of the "world"  in which we live. His primary strategy is to strike, through unchastity, at our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, at our masculinity/femininity as iconic of the Trinity, at the sacredness of sexuality, at the holiness of marriage and the vowed life. By undermining chastity, he destroys the family and the Church, the two and only two institutions created by God himself. 

Conclusion

Chastity is:

- Tenderness and reverence for the other sex.

- Interior sobriety, serenity, and freedom.

- Self-esteem in the mode of humility and gentleness.

- Gender, masculinity/femininity, as generosity/generativity, as paternity/maternity.

- Courage, fortitude, steadfastness, resiliency and anti-fragility.

- Openness to God, his plan, and his inspirations.

Chastity is more than difficult! For many of us it is impossible through our own efforts, so weak are we in flesh, so powerful "the world," and so cunning the Serpent. 

But God's grace is superabundantly available for us, in the Church, and vastly more powerful than the Evil that threatens to engulf us.

When our own children were teenagers, my wife and I were relaxed: we had no curfew, we didn't monitor or control, they came and went as they pleased, we trusted them. If they misbehaved we generally didn't know about it. But we were firmly united in our two priorities: you NEVER miss mass Sunday; and you save sex for your spouse. If you do fail in these, which you might and generally we do, you get to confession as soon as possible. And you do NOT, repeat, you do NOT go to communion in the state of mortal sin because that is a sacrilege. 

And so I exhort you, our grandchildren:  protect and cherish your chastity. Stay close to the sacraments! If you fall, run to confession! Get the healing you need! We are all so weak! Encourage each other in purity! Trust in God to help you and make you radiant in His love!

I am writing this on the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Yesterday was the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. These two human hearts were united in a most awesome, pure union. Let us turn in prayer to them, as well as St. Joseph, chaste spouse and father: and ask that we might emulate them in purity, strength, serenity, and generosity!

God bless you! I love you!

Parish and Neocatechumenate Eucharist in the Imminent Dystopia

The Neocatchumenate is arguably the most passionate, profound and promising ecclesial development of our time. It is the strongest medicine for several reasons. First, for those in deep crisis, far from the Christian life, facing the abyss, it is a powerful, long-term program. Second, it is the most militant, rigorous program for laity in the Church. Lastly, it forms enduring, resilient communities that promise to survive even in persecution. But it presents a difficult challenge to the traditional parish.

The previous blog essay highlighted the centrality for the Church, since Constantine, of the local parish as the locus of Eucharist as liturgical Event and enduring Presence. The multiverse of Catholic orders, movements, devotions and associations all accompany, complement, and enrich the parish; they never undermine or compete with it. They may offer an alternate "way" for a select group (eg. monasteries, friaries, convents) but these respect the primary integrity of the local parish. If there is tension, the sovereignty of the bishop over the diocese and the pastor over the parish is clear (although the papacy has often been the patron of innovative movements). 

This new "way" is paradoxical. It defers to the bishop and pastor as it only operates with explicit permission of both. It's goal is to renew the Church, at the parish level. This deference flows from a genuine filial trust in the hierarchy; it is not some Machiavellian political calculation. There is here a deep trust in the teaching authority of the magisterium and the efficacy of the sacramental economy. 

But practically, institutionally, it is a challenge to and even a competition with the parish worship system as received. It is passionately Eucharist-centered as it builds small communities around a tripod of Eucharist, the Word of God and community. It reconfigures the life of faith around the small community as center. The Saturday evening Eucharist becomes the defining event of the week: preparations of Word, bread, wine, flowers, and obtaining a priest characterize the week. This weekly celebration (as described in an earlier post) is a clear pivot away from the mass as sacrifice, altar, temple-type solemnity, kneeling, and silence toward the liturgy as Passover-type meal, festive, participative, lively with witness, exhortation and song. 

The Final Aim of This Way

What is the final goal? The articulated goal is renewal of the parish through an itinerary of formation in the faith. But the actual goal is implicit in its practice: transformation of the parish into a "community of smaller communities." The primacy falls upon the intimate fraternity. Almost all important activities occur within the small fraternity. All the communities gather, regularly but not frequently,  for major feasts, especially the Easter and Pentecost vigils, as well as periodic penance and similar services. But the liturgical life of this association remains entirely detached from the "ordinary" parish. 

So what we have in effect are two parallel cultic systems: the ordinary Sunday parish masses and the Saturday evening community gatherings. There is no real organic unity between them. 

In an instruction almost 10 years ago, Pope Benedict (arguably the world's greatest authority on Catholic liturgy) directed that these gatherings are "not strictly liturgical" but they are part of a "itinerary of formation" which prepares people for participation in the ordinary parish life. This assumes their self-description as "itinerary of formation" and implies  a temporary educative experience that terminates and directs the graduates into normal parish life.

Of course, that is not what happens. The small community structure is clearly a permanent institution, indeed THE foundation of the new, emergent Church. This small, intense, intimate association becomes the essential ecclesial unit, replacing the parish in primacy. The parish becomes an umbrella, a community of communities, but one's constitutive communal identity is with the smaller group. 

As a community matures, and after it completes the itinerary, (which takes 20-30 years),it does indeed become missionary in the formation of new communities. Thus it grows this new model, in connection with the parish, but it does so by creating an alternate model and spirituality.

For example: imagine someone with no Catholic background walking in this way for six years. Habituated to weekly Saturday Eucharist, he is advised to attend the parish mass on rare occasions, holidays not celebrated by the communities such as the Assumption or All Saints. But there is little energy or emphasis on this. So, if he travels, he may wonder if there are Saturday community liturgies in the area. He is less than likely to seek out a parish Sunday mass. He may know that he should; but he is not practiced in that.

Furthermore, he is likely to have little interest in the perpetual presence of Christ, physically, in the tabernacle. While the theology of Kiko is fiercely orthodox, the liturgy (of Carmen?) reflects some unfortunate post-Vatican II tendencies including a dismissal of the value of this perpetual presence. Like the "spirit of Vatican II" liberal and in contrast to the late Tridentine Catholic, the Neocat is unlikely to think about making a "visit" to the Blessed Sacrament.

Cardinal Arinze's Directive to Participate in the Sunday Parish Mass

In 2007, Cardinal Arinze on behalf of Pope John Paul II, after two years of consultation and work with seven cardinals, directed that the participants attend parish mass at least one Sunday of the month. Regarding the other Sundays, the alternate rituals are permitted based upon dialogue with the local bishop. 

This was a positive move towards integration into normal parish Catholicism. This is the direction stressed by Pope Benedict: that the goal was integration into the parish, as received, rather than the creation of a new type of parish. If I were bishop I would insist upon two monthly masses with the parish and direct that no community liturgies be held on the first and third Saturday evenings of the month. 

What happened after that? Nothing...as far as I can tell. (I am only a distant observer and not greatly knowledgeable.) The directive was apparently ignored. The Vatican did not enforce it. (Enforcement was not Pope Benedict's strength: witness his clear directive to McCarrick which was also disregarded in this same time frame!)

The motives of Kiko and Carmen are understandable: to protect the integrity of their charism. Dilution and compromise do threaten to weaken it in power and identity. But the problem:  it remains detached from, and an alternative to, "ordinary" parish life.

We can start to understand why this program is not welcomed into many dioceses; and why it has been disinvited from others, including NYC where I was catechized by the first community in the country. It is not the fault of the catechists or the pastors! There is a fundamental structural competition between the two cultic systems. 

Apocalyptic Time

In an important article which was published with the statues, Giuseppe Gennarini, initial catechist in the USA, retrieved writings of Karol Wojtyla from the 1950s that see our civilization has entered an apocalyptic time in which societal institutions are collapsing, Christianity is under attack, and a ferocious spiritual battle has commenced. In my reading of John Paul II, he also radiated a striking hope about the imminence of a new civilization of love. However this dystopian view of our world, including the Church, is implicit in the praxis of this way. All energies are directed to the community and the family: there is a muted but firm devaluation of all other institutions including politics, education, career, technology, and science. This is not directly stated, but it implied by the flow of attention and interest. The sense is that we are moving into chaos and disorder and our sole security is in our faith as shared in family and immediate community. This is the "benedict option" on steroids, if not articulated in that way. Additionally, the liturgical practice, centered in small communities, implies that the disappearance of the traditional parish...Church building, tabernacle, priest...would not be catastrophic as long as the communities continue to gather, however covertly, like those of the early, persecuted Church. This apocalyptic vision has become widespread in the Church, especially among zealous groups like charismatics (e.g. Ralph Martin.)

Are these prophets of doom correct: are we moving into a new dark age? The answer to this is a clear YES. I believe in no "arc of history"...be it Marxist dialectic, Darwinian evolution, technological progress, or Whig triumph of liberalism. But certainly the most powerful cultural/political forces across the globe today are: Communism (China, North Korea, Cuba), Islamic Fundamentalism (in various flavors), and the Cultural Liberalism of the West. These three outdo each other in their aversion to classic Christianity. Across most of the globe, Catholicism is persecuted. In the West, Christendom as we have known it is shrinking, defensive, and endangered. In the dark times we have already entered, the formidable communities of this Way may be our best hope.

The Eucharistic Vision of St. Charles de Focauld

With that said, however, it remains that this new network of communities is in tension with the classic, post-Constantine Catholic adoration of the enduring, parochial, Eucharistic presence as sovereign over a Christendom, however decadent.  We see two contrasting Eucharistic practices. The traditional is parish based, sacrificial, formal in a temple-like fashion, largely impersonal (assuming social needs are net outside of worship), and aware of the abiding presence. The alternate is event-full, communal, personal, stimulating and interactive, reverent in a more relaxed and meal-like fashion, detached from the broader parish and the abiding presence in the tabernacle. 

As we move more deeply into dystopia, must we decide on a hard binary? Or can the two mutually enrich each other in a conjugal embrace? The Catholic reply can only be the later.

Consider the Eucharistic mysticism of newly canonized St. Charles de Focauld. He buried himself in the middle of the Sahara amidst wandering Bedouins as a solitary, hidden witness to the Gospel, but with great confidence in the abiding Eucharistic presence. He had a sense that the vast Sahara, with almost no Christian presence, was mysteriously luminous with the presence of that small, white, quiet host.

It is curious that Kiko was inspired by Charles burying himself in the Sahara to do something similar with the gypsies of Spain, but he does not seem to have emulated liturgically this strong devotion to the abiding presence. This was possibly due to Carmen and her acceptance of the liturgical fashion of the early 1960s. 

Moving forward, the Catholic impulse will surely be to integrate the two practices. Catholic practice can be enriched by the lively, intense, intimate, interactive liturgy of this way. On the other side, the tripod will be enriched in its Eucharistic practice as it moves more deeply into parish worship on a regular basis and grows in devotion to the abiding presence. 

The future looks good: with the eventual demise of the founder and the increasing number of neocatechumenal priests who, loyal to both their way and the local church, there will be energy and focus to integrate the two more fully.

Since we have just started, this past Corpus Christi, a three year Eucharistic revival, led by our American bishops, it is a good time for all of us to deepen our adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  

Why Do the Deplorables Love Their Guns?

 Notwithstanding broad popular support for common sense gun control measures which hardly threaten the second amendment, our congress is barely capable of even minimum action. Liberals demonize the NRA, an organization that is currently in deep trouble on various fronts. The problem is broader and deeper: a critical mass (35 or 40%?), roughly the Trump base, cling passionately to their guns.

The long, strong tradition about guns in our country does not adequately account for this obsession. There is something deeper! The gun, individualistic and technological, is the final, reliable protection for the  threatened, isolated, unhinged, uprooted American.

The deplorable redneck is undereducated, underemployed, unchurched, unmarried, despairing, suspicious, liable to addiction, fatherless, and frightened. Over the last 50 years he has lost family, Church, trade union, neighborhood, the family-and-religion-friendly DNC and a rich network of mediating institutions. These have been replaced by mega-government, global capitalism, and hyper-technology. He has no roots, foundation, protection. These monstrosities are controlled by a powerful, educated, privileged, secular elite that advances an ideology hostile to everything precious to the deplorable: religion, freedom, community, marriage and family,  and the tiny unborn.

This elite is implementing the Great Reset: global engineering to control for global warming, pandemics, equality, unrestrained hyper-technology, sexual license, deconstruction of masculinity/femininity, low fertility, genocide of the unfit-incompetent-unborn-demented, open borders, and the bourgeois tyranny of bureaucracy. 

And...they are coming for their guns. Their guns are their last and only defense against a world gone cold and hateful. You cannot blame them! 

Systematic Racism? Or Systemic (small c) Catholicity? Letter 6 to My Teen Grandchildren

1.  Some previous letters have attempted to share Church teaching, especially on sexual chastity. This is different: it is my personal cultural observation. On this, a prudential judgment, Catholics disagree. Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory allege that our nation is systematically white racist. I do not think so..

2. My story: I recall no overt racism during my childhood in a homogeneous, working class, urban, Catholic ethnic neighborhood, mostly of Irish and Italians...not in in family, school, Church or work. My strongest, clearest childhood memory is learning, circa age 8, of the starving in China: I paced up and down our first floor, tormented by the thought of the suffering of these innocents. This concern was encouraged by family and education: we had Maryknoll missionary magazine, my parents sympathies were entirely with the working and poor classes, we often heard in school about the missions. In high school I read America and the NY Times, with an eye to the conditions of the poor, especially overseas. My father, as a UAW union organizer, was at Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington DC. Graduating high school, I decided to enter the Maryknoll Missionary Society to serve the poor overseas as a Catholic priest. 

For the entirety of my adult life, over 50 years, I have lived as a minority white in diverse environments: Jersey City, the most diverse city in the country; 25 years in UPS management; Catholic schools; Urban churches; Magnificat Home. Ethnically and racially I am normally outnumbered; and entirely comfortable with that. You are unlikely to find anyone with more inter-ethnic, inter-racial experience.

All my life-worlds...UPS, Jersey City, little league, schools and parishes, boarding homes...are blissfully free of racism and anti-racism both. On the rare occasion such do raise there ugly heads, it is startling and dissonant. In it place: small-c "catholicity."  "Catholicity" means universal, inclusive, welcoming, diversity. This is not just me personally but the worlds in which I have lived. My thesis: any pursuit of what is good-or true-beautiful is "catholic" in its spontaneous, irrepressible outreach to others, of all races, classes, backgrounds. 

3. Anecdote: My high school senior retreat, Spring 1965, Loyola Jesuit Retreat House, Morristown, NJ: the priest was speaking strongly against racism as a structural sin. I was entirely in agreement. A classmate raised his hand: "I understand, Father, that racism is sinful. But my father is a barber in Newark and he could not accept blacks because he would lose his white customers." The retreat master doubled down: "That is exactly what I mean: that is cooperation with systematic injustice." The loyal son defended his lower-working class Italian father. It became heated: could have come to blows! I remember sitting there thinking: "You are right Father, but can't we cut the hard-working guy some slack?" Even then there was about anti-racist zeal a shrill, moralistic, condemnatory tone. (BTW I often get my hair cut in black or Hispanic barbers in Jersey City. They seem to get a kick out of me. This is unusual. Barbershops tend to be segregated: rare to see a black in a white barbershop and vice versa. Is this systematic racism?)

4. During my teenage years (1962-8) all  major cultural institutions of social conscience renounced racism and became systematically anti-racist: Church, academy, entertainment, media, law, sports, politics (excepting  a transitory, futile white backlash of George Wallace.) A complex system of laws, regulations and quotas was implemented. Racism became overnight a thing of disgust. A little later, in the 1980s, management in UPS (and the entire capitalist world) was put through diversity training in which we were strongly, and correctly, told that racism was intolerable: the logic of capitalism required diversity/inclusion  of employment and customer base both. UPS, traditionally dominated by white (largely Irish) male truck drivers, became fervently welcoming of non-white/non-males. Systematic anti-racism prevailed corporately and institutionally.

5. Blacks suffer inordinately by all indices: income and wealth, health, imprisonment. This is a shocking racial inequality. There can be no doubt that this is largely due to the past history of slavery and then Jim Crow. That ended decisively by 1970.  The big question: is this injustice continued in some degree by racism, systematic or even unconscious ("systemic")? I have been thinking about this, reading about it, and observing in various situations for over 60 years. My answer is emphatically: NO!

6. It is CLASS and  CULTURE, not RACE that keep people poor, powerless, and marginalized today in the USA. Poverty, oppression and powerlessness are all color-blind.

In the post-war period, the poor of all races advanced economically and socially; the gap between rich and poor closed; blacks especially made huge gains. Since that time a large number of blacks and minorities continued to advance. But there has been a growing gap between the rich and the poor, of all races/ethnicities. I am not talking about the 1% who are obscenely wealthy, but about the underprivileged in contrast to the well-educated, affluent, secure, upwardly-mobile middle class. 

The lower class, of whatever race, is drowning in the CULTURE OF POVERTY. This is a dense, complex, interlocking system of many components: low income, bad schools, poor health care, violent neighborhoods, low Church attendance, high rates of addiction and mental illness. But the primary, foundational factor: NO FATHER IN THE HOME. Poverty is overwhelmingly feminine: mother with children and no husband/father. A low-income family, with a stable, employed, responsible father in the home is not caught in the Culture of Poverty. Most of our immigrant ancestors came here poor, lived poor, but were not culturally poor because they were sustained by a family-with-father and a religious-tribal-culture rich in "social capital." Social capital is not money, but strong bonds of loyalty, family care, Church, discipline, mutual self-support, and trust in God. The culture of poverty is fatherlessness...and the entire universe of impoverishments that this brings. Money is the least of the problems. The young men, unmentored, become gang thugs or impotent addicts. The young women, un-fathered, throw themselves recklessly into the arms of men incapable of caring for them and little ones they abort or raise in poverty. 

7. We see here that the inordinate amount of black poverty comes from the historic breakup of the black family during slavery and the disenfranchisement of the African slave father. This was an assault of boundless perversity! The root cause of black poverty today  is the continued CRISIS IN FATHERHOOD. Increasingly, this crisis is spreading in the white underclass as well.

8. But that is not all of it. Since the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement around 1970, things have gotten much worse for many, but not all black families. At that time about 70% of black babies were born to married couples; today it is about 30%. In areas like NYC two out of every three black babies are aborted. Around 1970 the two black communities went in divergent directions: the fortunate, with fathers and access to education and employment, flourished. The unfortunate, fatherless and trapped in the Culture of Poverty, went from bad to worse. Two developments made things worse: the Cultural Revolution, especially the liberation of sex from marriage but also detachment from tradition, religion and authority; and the culture of entitlement, victimization, and dependency.

9. The Cultural Revolution had two components: sexual freedom and rejection of authority/tradition. The first was a calamity for the lower classes: men were given license to have sex without worry about children because of contraception. Since birth control often fails, the consequence was a torrent of abortions and poor young women with children but no fathers. The rich are smart and selfish enough to avoid this development. Additionally, the rejection of faith, tradition, and authority was devastating for the poor who lacked strong social support systems of money, connection, education and privilege. 

Additionally, a small but strong culture of resentment developed a narrative in which blacks continue to be victimized by systematic white racism. On the one hand, this fed rage and the urge to violence of unhinged, un-fathered males. On the other hand, it induced a feeling of weakness, impotence and being a victim. On the one hand criminality, gangs and violence; on the other hand despair, addiction and masculine impotence. 

10. The Black Lives Matter Movement is an outgrowth of these two trends. It is expressive of largely unconscious feminine rage at pervasive abandonment by men but supportive of sexual license, a rejection of religion, an insistence on entitlement, and a posture of helplessness and victimization.

Morally and spiritually, it is the polar opposite of Martin Luther King's Civil Rights Movement with its gospel roots, confidence, small-c catholicity, sense of purpose, alignment with other communities, forgiveness, non-violence, generosity, gratitude and hope

12. The BLM narrative of systemic white racism is toxic and destructive on many levels.

- First of all, it is patently false. Certainly there are pockets of racism. But our  national systems are stridently anti-racist and our dominant culture systemically so.

- Secondly, and this is the very worst aspect, it makes the black man to be a victim, weak and impotent before The (white) Man. The sense of agency, virility, competence of black youth is further weakened. It deepens the black crisis in masculinity by arousing rage or despair. Imagine you are an 18-year old white pulled over for doing 80 in a 65 mph zone: you ready yourself and hope for the best. Imagine you are an 18-year-old black pulled over and you have been hearing a lot about the racism of the police: you will be either enraged or overwhelmed by fear as you rash-judge it to be racist.

- Thirdly it slanders white people and especially the police. Slander, a sin against the 8th commandment, is serious. With the police (as with all human organizations) there are systematic problems: it attracts some violent, angry and sociopathic men; it maintains a "blue wall" of loyalty that often shields wrong-doing; the unions overprotect with the complicity of Democrat urban politicians who rely upon the unions for support. These issues are far more pervasive than racism: and they hurt all of us, especially the poor, of whatever race. This slandering of the police is serious. The vast majority are honorable, even heroic, in  risking their lives to keep us safe. The disparagement and ingratitude they have endured is despicable.

-Lastly, it polarizes our society, enflaming racial suspicion, resentment and false guilt. The election of Obama seemed at the time to be a culminating point in the victory over racism; an era of racial peace was anticipated. What followed was the opposite. Why? Did things get worse? No. Was there some shattering new discovery? No. Rather, there was a contagious spread of this false narrative of systematic racism.

13. In our two boarding homes we have had hundreds of visits from police, firemen, EMTs. They are  a mixture of ethnicities, of  men and women, and unfailingly courteous, professional and reassuring. Is Jersey City exceptional? 

14. Senseehray, my dear friend of happy memory, a large, strong, black woman, passed her  years on the tough streets of Jersey City. Her son spent time in prison. She told me that if she sees a group of young black men on the street, she avoids them. She does not do so if they are white. I asked if she experienced white racism; she said No. I got the same response from other black friends. One insisted on systematic racism but could not give a single concrete example. 

15. White guilt is the primary force behind BLM. In the black neighborhoods I frequent I did not see a single BLM sign on a house. The white, affluent suburbs of Essex County NJ had one on every third lawn. White liberals live safe, sequestered, privileged lives; welcoming people of color of their own class and culture, educated and progressive; away from the poor, suffering and afflicted of any skin color. They suffer an unconscious guilt because they know they have it so good while the underclass suffers deprivation through no fault of their own. They really know the system is rigged for them, in terms of class, not race. They don't go to Church to confess. They don't want to be around deplorables. So they silence their conscience by virtue-signaling with a BLM lawn sign.

16. Now two years out from the explosion of Black Lives Matter we can judge the consequences. Violent crime, especially in poor urban areas, is surging. The police are discouraged. Many retiring. Others reluctant to enforce the law as engagement with criminals may go badly for them. Prosecutors are refusing to prosecute. The legacy of "defund the police" is lethal.

17. Now two years out from the George Floyd killing we might, soberly, reconsider it in contrast to the Uvalde massacre. Those children and teachers truly were innocents: victims of a lunatic, of loose gun laws, of faulty doors, and the passivity of the police. In no way did they provoke their death. George Floyd was no innocent: a career criminal (8 convictions), he had invaded and menaced a woman in her own home; he was intoxicated, committing a crime, and resisting arrest. Resisting arrest always creates a life-threatening situation as the police, armed with guns, have to restrain the resistor. It was the size and strength of Floyd that provoked the excessive use of force. It was not the color of his skin. If he were Serbian or Mongolian would he be alive today? I doubt it! If he were an anemic 125 pound black, would he be alive today? Definitely! We see in the contrast of the two police responses, one tragically too strong and the other even more disastrously too weak, the immense challenge of police work. The police are not above criticism (I myself sat on a jury that found a policeman criminally guilty of a excessive force, white-on-white), but the broad-brush allegation of "systematic racism" is a slander.

18. I have, always and everywhere, experienced  "the catholicity of the good." Any shared pursuit of what is true, good or beautiful moves inexorably, powerfully, to include others, of whatever race, ethnicity, class, or background. If you are a student in love with learning and truth, you welcome a companion, especially one from another background. If you are working to help the suffering, sick, poor and afflicted, you are thrilled to be joined by others, different from yourself. Same if you are an actor, musician, artist! If you coach little league you welcome enthusiastic, talented athletes without concern for skin color or background. Even a good capitalist wants good workers and lots of customers...it is the nature of the thing. In contrast to the dreary, whiney narrative of "systematic racism"...I been blessed by systemic catholicity in everything I have done the last 75 years.

I hope you, my grandchildren, are and will be similarly blessed!

Autobiographical  Postscript  You may wonder why I am so passionate about this, so fierce in my anti-anti-racism. It is quite personal for me. I have been accused of being racist. Few things so infuriate me. My entire adult life I have been a front line, street level manager: as teacher, supervisor of truck drivers, and director of a small boarding home. I did not climb the ladder of career success, status, and influence. I have wielded a modest amount of power, circumscribed always by surrounding protocols and the reaction of my students, drivers, residents. I have carried the responsibility conscientiously, often with a sense of inadequacy and failure, keenly aware that my authority is in the service of something greater: learning and truth, getting the packages delivered on time, or providing a good home. Color of skin is the last thing on my mind. If I find it necessary to confront or discipline someone, nothing is so toxic as this false accusation. The last time it happened: getting complaints of loud music from a resident, I asked her calmly to lower the volume on her radio. Snide and snarky she replied: "I don't see you correcting any of these white women about their radios!" How does one respond to this? 

So you see that the entire BLM-CRT agenda is to my ear this vile accusation writ-large: a pity party, a slander and a sin against the "catholicity of the Good."

, 

Corpus Christi and the Parish: Monotony, Continuity, and Permanence of Presence

The feast of Corpus Christi, today, is the finale of the liturgical year.  We have moved patiently through Advent/Christmas, a short ordinary time, the intensity of Lent, the Paschal Mystery of Holy Week, a prolonged Easter season that culminates in Pentecost. The culmination, Pentecost, overflows into Trinity Sunday and then Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi is the fulfillment, the completion, the final and lasting ecstasy of communion.

With this feast, Christ is fully, finally, perpetually with us...physically, spiritually, institutionally. There is simply no more to be given. The remainder of the year, about 23 weeks or almost half year, we  celebrate that fulness, including consequences like the Assumption and All Saints. With this feast our cup is overflowing...and continues to overflow right up to the feast of Christ the King.

The center of our Catholic faith...the physical, institutional, synergistic, dramatic, eventful, generative heart/ground/goal/origin/foundation/promise of our Catholic life...is the Body of Christ...that arrives in every Mass and remains perpetually in the Eucharistic chapel.

There are two inseparable dimensions of the Eucharist: it is an Event in the liturgical, remembering Act, and it remains with us as an abiding Presence.

Both occur, paradigmatically, in the parish Church. The institutional, perpetual center of Catholic life is the parish Church...wherein is celebrated the Sunday and daily liturgy...wherein dwells Christ bodily in the tabernacle always and forever... attached to which is at least one priest...out of which and into which flow, at once centripetally and centrifugally, all Catholic activities, engagements, energies, torments and joys.

Since Constantine: the Eucharist, in the local parish, is the center of the world.

Catholicism is a multiverse of orders, movements, associations, monasteries, hermits, missionaries, visionaries, mystics, ascetics, devotions, activists, quietists, artists, martyrs, virgins. sinners and saints. But all of this flows from and moves toward the Center: the plain, parochial,  Eucharistic Presence. 

Reformers of various stipes bemoan the corruption which accompanied Roman acceptance of Christianity. They grieve the loss of apostolic purity and innocence that characterized the primitive, martyred Church. And genuine renewal is always a return to that fount of apostolic zeal, faith and love. But the Catholic imagination boundlessly rejoices in the permanent, institutional presence of Christ in the liturgy and tabernacle. 

Whatever the violence, corruption, betrayal, sin and evil of society...and even the institutional Church...the Eucharistic presence is the Sovereign of the World...until Christ returns in glory.

This Presence is white, round, thin, plain, silent, simple, small, sober, serene, subdued, ordinary and perfectly monotonous. Monotony...meaning sameness of tone...implying tedium, boredom, fatigue, lack of variety/interest/excitement...is highly negative. But this meaning is turned on its head here: under the appearance of small/silent/simple/subdued is the perfect communion of God and Man. Hidden here is the infinite Happening-Permanence of eternal love. Under the disguise of dull, boring, tedious...is boundless Delight, endless Drama, unending Event.

In the tabernacle, the mass, the parish...as well as in the priest, associations, music, activities...Christ is incarnate under the appearance of monotony, boredom, annoyance, and poverty of excitement and interest. This is part of the Mystery.

Like others, I have spent a lifetime searching for spiritual arousal. With an aversion to the boring parish, I moved from Maryknoll College Seminary, into flirtation with the Catholic Left, to the study of theology, to the charismatic renewal, into Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, devotion to the Divine Mercy, in and out of the Neocatechumenate,  and participation in Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist. I have benefited from this journey and value all these engagements.

BUT...I always come back to the parish. That is where we are baptized, married, buried, catechized and sacramentalized. It is analogous to blood family: much as we treasure our friendships, somehow we always return to family. The two...family and friends..do not oppose each other; they enrich and infill each other. But there remains a primacy to blood...that of family and that of the crucified Christ. There is a dullness to our family...but also a depth, density, and durability. And so it is with the parish.

To arrive at a profound, passionate, intelligent, mature, enduring love for the Eucharistic Christ... many of us need that journey in and out of renewal movements, retreats, associations of the faith, devotions, pilgrimages, penances, missions, bible studies, scrutinies, deliverances, healings, discernments, revivals. But all of the above...all the ecstasy, adventure, drama, serendipity, activism, and devotion of Catholic life...lead back to quiet Communion with the small, silent, simple, monotonous Eucharistic Christ.

When I travel...for work, vacation, visits of family...I need to know where I will sleep, where I will eat, and where I will find the Eucharist. The sacrificial table/altar of worship and the tabernacle of the Eucharist is always and everywhere and forever (until Christ returns) the center of The World, the center of every local world, the center of every personal world.

Jesus, crucified-risen-ascended, bodily,  reigns forever from heaven...invulnerable and invincible...and from every tabernacle and altar of worship. He reigns sovereignly...silently, simply, serenely, secretly. Our entire life flows from Him and to Him.

Does God Love Satan?

Great question!

We have to say that God loves Satan and also that God Hates Satan. In distinct ways.

As with all things supernatural, we speak always by analogy: God is similar to us within an infinite dissimilarity. So we always risk anthropomorphism: attributing to God our own human traits. We must insist that what we say of God, in our terms, is infinitely different from what we understand, even as it is similar. It is infinitely greater. So, if we say God is fatherly, we mean he is perfectly fatherly, and any fatherliness we know is, at its best, a small reflection of that splendor which is without any imperfection.

We will distinguish Lucifer (word meaning "Morning Star"), as the magnificent angel that God created, from Satan (meaning "accuser"), as the evil being that rejected God ("I will not serve!") and became diabolic ("that which tears apart") and the one who condemns us.

Lucifer was the greatest angel, most intelligent and powerful, inferior only to Mary, queen of angels and saints, and Jesus Christ himself. Clearly God loved Lucifer. Since love is eternal, God continues in some mysterious way to love this creature. 

God's love for him now, after his fall, must have something like a "grief." Analogy! Beware: God cannot grieve the way we do because he is Perfect Being and cannot lose, cannot be diminished. Yet, in his love for Lucifer he did lose something, not something essential to his Being, but something he loved. Surely he must suffer similar "grief" if any sinner goes to hell.

But using his God-given freedom, Lucifer and his comrades became something different from God's creature, he became an anti-creature, a god-unto-himself, a despiser of creation and the Creator, the one who tears things apart, the accuser of the brethren. Drawing of course from the goodness of God's creation, Lucifer perverted that into his own Kingdom of Darkness. God despises this kingdom and its king. How could he not?

Yet Satan is alive, he is a being, he is existent. Therefore, God must love him or else he would cease to exist. He has qualities which did not die: intelligence, a strong will, purposefulness. These are in themselves good gifts. So we might say that God loves Satan metaphysically, in that he is a being with goodness, but hates him morally in that he uses these gifts purely for evil. Clearly, this is all very Mysterious and yet is it intelligible, if obscurely.

Another sense in which we might imagine God loving Satan is in his role, as the Great Antagonist, in the Drama of Salvation. He is our enemy. But by resisting God, the Kingdom of Heaven, and each of us, he helps to elicit more love, mercy, and goodness...from God and heaven, from the saints and from us. You might say he does us a favor: torturing us, testing us, tempting us and thus giving us a chance to exercise our freedom and grow in holiness and goodness.

Does God Love Me As a Sinner?  As a Hit Man? Fornicator? Communist? Terrorist?  Addict? Porn Compulsive? Nihilist? Pedophile? Cutter? Sociopath? Narcissist? 

Short answer: God loves the sinner; God hates the sin. So he does NOT love you in those false identities. He hates those anti-identities because they destroy the true you, the you He created, the you he loves. Because he loves you totally and unconditionally, he hates the untruths that undermine you. So he hates "you as a hitman" or "you as a fornicator." As God hates the sin which attacks you, we can say that he hates the sinner in you, the anti-you, the delusional, deceived, false you.

So we are involved in a Great Drama, a cosmic battle between good and evil. This takes place in each human heart. God is the Protagonist, combating Satan the Great Antagonist and our own complicity with him. 

And our own love for God will resound with our hatred of sin.

Thanks and Trust: Letter 4 to My Teen Grandchildren

 I thank You and I trust You.

Jesus, I surrender myself to You. Take care of everything.

Jesus, I trust in You.

Let your Mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you.

Thank You!

Above are five aspirations (Latin aspire means "to breathe") or short prayers which we can say gently, easily with a single breath. I invite you to slowly read each of them. As a prayer. See which feels best to you. That can be your aspiration for today. You can repeat it habitually throughout the day: while you walk, run, rest, ride the bus.

Aspiration is one of the best forms of prayer. It is SOOOO easy. You simply, quietly, slowly, meaningfully say a few words while in your heart you make a most wonderful ACT.

As you see these five all have to do with THANKS and TRUST.

The pathway to Joy is thanks or gratitude.

The pathway to Serenity or interior peace is trust or surrender.

Let's work on thanks first. Stop for a minute. Close your eyes and thank God for the first 10 things that come into your mind. They can be very small or very large. Anything. Do it slowly, quietly, thoughtfully. Count the 10 on your fingers. Go!

As you come out of your gratitude list or litany how do you feel? My bet is that you feel better. That you have a touch of joy. This is because you have made contact with 10 beautiful, true, good things in your life and with the Great Giver and Lover who is their source.

When you are feeling down, depressed, sad...here is your tonic: your gratitude list. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and say "thank you for...." ten times. It is something marvelous, but is not magic.. As this become habitual you will gradually feel an increasingly sense of well being, safety, and delight. This will permeate your life...your work, study, sports, friendship, family...and be a source of joy and inspiration to others. 

Not absolutely of course...total joy comes only in heaven. But already you are living "paradise on earth" in an increasing manner every day.

If thanks connects you with God in your good stuff, trust connects you to him in your stress, problems, challenges, anxieties, sufferings. For this you might use "Jesus I trust in you" or "Jesus I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything." If you feel overwhelmed by many things you might like the second, especially the "everything" part.

Okay. Let's pause again. What is your biggest worry or concern right now? Given that, are there others as well? What are they? After you identify one or more worries, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat one of the aspirations you like above. As you do so realize you are giving that problem to God; you are releasing it; you are trusting that He will take care of it; you are relaxing. The problem is no longer yours; it is His; and you can breathe easy and peacefully respond to His promptings. Do it several times as you breathe slowly. Go.

The beauty of these aspirations is that you can do them all day. They become habitual. With all the gifts received you are thanking the Giver and growing in your appreciation and receptivity as well as union with God so peacefully, quietly, joyfully. With every challenge, difficulty, anxiety, and suffering you are surrendering in trust, giving yourself a relief, waiting with expectant hope, and joining yourself again in communion with God.

Of course this is not magic: it is not that you can wipe out sadness and fear. In our flesh we are always vulnerable to pain and anxiety. We know life can be arbitrary and cruel. On this earth there is no final relief from pain and stress. But with these spiritual acts of the will you will be strengthened to endure suffering and stress with a deep underlying patience, peace and joy.

May you grow every day, more deeply in thanks and trust, more passionately, quietly, intimately in love with God!

Antifragility: Letter 3 to My Teen Grandchildren

 "Antifragility,"  title of a book by Nassim Talib, is developed by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in  The Coddling of the American Mind, a book that I  received from Uncle Joe and gave to Uncle Dave.

The word means more than robust, in the sense that something can withstand shocks, stressors and attacks. It means that something gets stronger and flourishes, precisely because of attacks, competition, stress, and persecution.

You are  ANTI-FRAGILE!

Let's contrast: Fragile is something that breaks easily, like a piece of china. Non-fragile is something that doesn't break easily, like a baby's plastic cup that can be dropped. But Antifragile is something that gets stronger the more it is stressed.

Your muscles are antifragile. The more you work them, stress them, push them even into pain, the stronger you become. The worst thing you could do for your muscles is to stay in bed for three months, do no exercise, and they will atrophy and become weak.

Your immune system is anti-fragile. When you expose yourself to bacteria, viruses, infections, and injuries your immune system fires itself up to combat the attacker. You become more resilient, robust, tough and durable. If you could entirely shield yourself from germs your immune system would atrophy; you would become delicate and vulnerable; you might die of the common cold.

(I suggest you cut down on hand washings, stay away from sanitizers entirely, avoid gloves, and reduce your hand wash time from 18 to 6 seconds. You might NOT want to tell your Mom or Dr. Anthony Fauci about this advice, but if you do, don't worry, I am not fragile! LOL!)

(A huge believer in antifragility, before I knew the word, I despised the pandemic lockdowns, masking, social distancing. But I love the vaccines. A vaccine works with antifragility: the idea is not to quarantine yourself from the attacker, but to prudently expose yourself to small quantities so that your immune system swings into defense and develops protection when the big attacks come. )

Children from large families benefit from herd immunities: there are so many children around, many of them carrying germs, that you are constantly exposed and your immune system works on all cylinders. When I was 12 and playing basketball with 7 other boys and one had a soda, we would pass the bottle around and each take a swig. If I was last, I would receive germs from the other 7. This was a great workout for my immune system. Even better if there were 12 boys!

Your generation, unfortunately, suffers from "saftyism" and overprotection. Washing your hands all the time will reduce exposure to germs, it will also leave you with an anemic immune system. You have been cursed by a pervasive anxiety that you are fragile and must be protected above all things. Helicopter moms! Cell phones on person at all times! Always supervised, never unsupervised sports!  News and social media obsessed with mass shootings! 

Example: when my Clare was 17 and Margaret Rose 15 we handed them the keys to the car and sent them together to Prince Edward Island for a weeklong Catholic retreat. That is in Canada; a two day drive; entailing an overnight in a hotel. Some thought us irresponsible and reckless. I had complete confidence: strong, confident, intelligent and entirely competent, they were...and are...antifragile! (Aside: maternal love tends to be more protective and risk-averse; but on this your Grandmother and I were in agreement.)

Worst of all is an intellectual delicacy that shrinks from disagreement and argument. Today's college students (not all to be sure) retreat from engagement with ideas that differ from their own. So, we have cancel culture. For example, Fleckinstein, were his views to be widely known, would certainly be banned from Ivy League or prominent Catholic universities as a misogynist, racist and homophobe. Even the brightest are so dainty, intellectually, that they would be incapable of engaging with him in a calm, charitable, respectful manner.

This is even more true on the spiritual level! Our Lord in the gospels and St. Paul in the epistles tell us to expect tribulations, trials, persecutions, even death. This is what it means to follow Jesus to Calvary. You will NOT have a soft, easy, pleasant life. You WILL have an arduous, challenging, painful life. Rejoice! As you face, accept, endure, and prevail through bad things your character is formed in virtue and honor. You become better.

Jesus actually told us we would be able to handle snakes and drink poison! He told us "Do Not Be Afraid" a kazillion-badillion times! Your great-grandparents were the Great Generation. Why so great? Because their moral character was tested and purified by the suffering of the Great Depression and World War II. We are all beneficiaries of that endurance and fortitude! May you inherit that courage, patience, and resilience as you face your own daily trials!

Final thought: I love writing these letters to you. I only ask that you calmly consider them. I expect no response. But I would enjoy any reaction: agreement, question and especially disagreement. I am 75 years old this year. I am conservative. You are growing up in an entirely different world. It is inevitable and wholesome for you to disagree with me. It would do us both good to exchange views. I will not melt if you differ...I am antifragile...you are too!

Presidency as Paternity: Trump and Biden

We are all, although unconsciously, looking for father figures. We were created to journey from our mother's womb into the arms of our heavenly father. Masculinity in its core as paternity is representative of the Fatherhood of God. Our earthly fatherhood, biological-emotional-spiritual, is secondary and derivative. Not so for motherhood. Maternity is distinct, non-representative, with an integrity and identity of its own, although of course received by God as is all creaturely life.. The role of the human father is to point his children to our heavenly Father., I have succeeded as a father if my children know and love God our Father. That is finally all that matters!

But no human father is adequate to the job. He must hand his children over to new father figures: priests, coaches, bosses, mentors. A daughter with a good relationship with Mom has no need for mother figures. A son who is well-mothered moves on and is not looking for a mother figure. Most of us fail to finish the Oedipal passage (from mother to father and then on from there) in perfect shape so residual longings to regress to the maternal embrace are widespread. Think of Hugh Hefner, Playboy, and the fetish for female breast. These urges are, of course, infantile and pathological and a hinderance for the man in his journey into paternity and to the Father. Consider: we speak often of father figures; never of mother figures. 

Every man in a position of authority...CEO, teacher, policeman, general, president...is an image of the fatherhood of God. His task: to reflect, in his particular position, the Fatherhood of God. This includes, of course, competence in the particular task: a policeman must know the law, a CFO accounting, a priest theology, a coach his sport. But beyond that he is AUTHORITATIVE as just, merciful, truthful, certain, protective, steadfast, reliable, and life-giving. He does not have to be perfect because he is merely representative. His flaws and failings are not a hindrance but constitutive of his role as humility allows him to, with or without words, announce: it is not about me, there is One infinitely more just, merciful, truthful, certain, protective steadfast, reliable and life-giving: Seek Him!

A woman cannot be a father and cannot be a father figure. It is impossible. In a position of authority a woman can be more capable in the specific skills. Most likely she is stronger in skills related to maternity: nurture, emotional intelligence, empathy, team building, encouragement, inclusion, and conflict resolution. Exceptionable women with strong paternal attributes (strength, confidence, assertiveness, stability, sobriety, etc.) can provide that fatherly feeling: Golda Meir, Nicky Halley, Margaret Thatcher. But she cannot entirely provide that indescribable, intuitive, instinctive sense of safety, strength, stability, and order that comes from a strong, good virile figure.

A father must be strong and good. So there are two ways for a man to fail as father: be strong but selfish, violent, toxic and therefore lacking in goodness. Or  be weak, lacking in strength.. Trump and Biden are representative of these two.

Trump: Toxic Paternity

Tall, strong, confident, aggressive, expansive...Trump is a strong father figure. He was elected, I suggested in 2016, precisely because many were desperate for that feeling of safety, strength, stability that he provided. But he is toxic, primarily because of his breathtaking narcissism. He is a strong father, but a bad father. He entirely lacks humility: he is the center of his own world. As a result, everyone in his world is at risk. His history with women and the way he speaks of them is particularly disturbing. Although my sense is he does not have the sexual addictions that afflicted Clinton and Kennedy, his boundless selfishness makes him more threatening. Particularly troubling was the occasion when he spoke about his own daughter as a sex object: absence of reverence, lack of boundaries, unbounded sexualization of women, and incomprehension of the tender-chaste-protective essence of fatherhood. That one verbal slip seemed to open  a door to the unthinkable: incest.

Have you wondered about the psychological source of the hysterical nature of the Trump Derangement Syndrome? I offer a Freudian interpretation: anxiety about fatherly incest. Hysteria itself is a quintessentially feminine phenomenon: pervasive, immobilizing, non-specific feeling of being endangered, unprotected, confused, without defense or agency. It is the reaction of a vulnerable woman without masculine protection. Imagine if the very source of your protection, your father, is the threat to your wellbeing, in the most sensitive, intimate manner. Imagine that you are small and weak, and he is powerful, really invincible, and seeming unrestrained by conscience or compassion?

I am NOT suggesting that Trump himself is incestuous; nor even that he is entirely psychopathic in regard to conscience and compassion. He seems to have a loyal, affectionate and intact family. 

Rather, I am getting at the nature of the aversion to him on the part of the entire Left. His policies are objectionable to them, but no worse than were those of Reagan or Goldwater. His moral failings (selfishness, greed, arrogance, divisiveness, xenophobia, incompetence) are common among successful politicians. But so many otherwise sober, intelligent, thoughtful people become agitated, incoherent, irrational, and vicious...hysterical...at the mention of the Donald.

I am suggesting a deep, unconscious, overwhelming anxiety that in some way they will be violated, not literally, by this powerful, vile man. They sense he is our father; he is powerful but threatening. They imagine a nuclear war, global melting, unrestrained gun violence, resurgent white racism1 They are in a panic;  enraged! 

I do not entirely blame them. I am happily immune to this anxiety but I could not vote for him. He is a bad father.

Biden: Emasculated Presidency

Beneath his jolly, sincere, charming demeanor, Joe Biden is The Non-Father as systemically weak, passive, incompetent, void of any moral backbone or core. In descending order of significance:

12. While his policy on Ukraine has been basically sound, he has consistently done too little too late. The obvious build up on the border in preparation for invasion should have elicited a flow of weapons on our part. It may have deterred the invasion; worst case it would have strengthened the Ukraine in their defense in the early months. Biden did nothing. Right now the Ukrainians are getting destroyed by superior Russian artillery. We have been slow in delivery. Worse, we have hesitated in providing the strong weapons that would make the difference out of fear of offending Putin. Again: timidity!

11. Lack of energy is a palpable characteristic of this administration. Compare the most energetic of our presidents in memory: Kennedy, Johnson, Regan, Clinton, and Obama. Johnson and Regan really delivered abiding change; but about all of these there was an excitement, a sense of direction, of movement and hope. His age and physical/mental debility does not help, but there is more than that to the lethargy, tiredness and vacuity of this administration. It is the lack of any moral core. There is no purpose or endgame or motive for exertion. He is tired morally and spiritually. He is loyal, of course, to the classical New Deal, big state liberalism of FDR, JFK, Hubert Humphry which carried strong Catholic values of solidarity. But this has been polluted by compromise with cultural liberalism and elite "Wokism" in all its decadence. It no longer draws upon the solid, working class values of ethnic Catholicism. He has no identity: he campaigned as a moderate, but has been unable to work with Joe Manchin for a populist economics of justice. He caters to the far Left, but he does not deliver. Biden is like Theoden of Rohan, the pathetic, enfeebled king in Lord of the Rings who was finally aroused by Gandalf.

10. His appointments and staff as a whole reflect weakness and passivity. Blinken at State radiates uncertainty and insecurity, the worst possible vices for that position; Buttigieg, insecure in his own masculine identity, is happily oblivious of the supply chain catastrophe that is devastating our economy; Kamala as Vice evokes no confidence at all; even the military has gone Woke, gay-friendly and seem to be no match for an expansive China. Trump's cabinet teemed with alpha males who rivaled Trump in confidence, ego and assertiveness: Mattis, Kelly, Ball, McMasters, Tillerson, Pompeo, Mnuchin, Carson, Perry, Miller and Sessions. The clash of these male egos provided an unending explosion of testosterone-based energy. If Trump hung out with jocks, bullies and tyrants, the Biden cabinet is the Wimpy Kids Club.

9. The Hunter story is a sad one: sister-in-law affair (there is incest again, this literal but not biological), sex addiction, drugs, Ukraine, China, and the way he has traded on his father's position. To say the least, Joe has not been a strong, directive father in his own family. Can he be trusted as "father" of the entire country. The two are not unrelated!

8. Our raging, devastating inflation was in part caused by the unnecessary, extravagant last wave of pandemic relief. He is like an indulgent mother who wants to pamper her kids, spending money that is not there. This is of course the way of the Left. Even now in this inflation he is pushing for more spending, forgiving the college debt of those who least need it, the highly educated.

7. Black Lives Matter: Joe parrots the racist trope, speaking of a "new Jim Crow." A few decades ago he was known for his "tough on crime" approach, when that was popular. He has changed that song with the time. Again, no moral backbone1 With BLM he further emasculates black males, making them victims of the stronger, white "man"; disparaging their own masculine, paternal agency and slandering the police at the same time. Two birds with one stone: black males and police.  He tends to emasculate others in his image..

6 With that we have a crime surge in our cities. Blacks and the poor are the victims. Police are discouraged; retiring in large numbers; and reluctant to be firm in the face of crime. Prosecutors in major cities give a blank check to criminals. The primary role of state and paternity: protection. This administration is incapable of protecting the vulnerable.

5. The border is open, unprotected, swarming with unvetted immigrants including criminals and drug dealers. Again:  a failure to protect; incomprehensible weakness and passivity.

4. His LGBTQ-friendly policy advances the deconstruction of authentic femininity and masculinity that he so perfectly embodies in his own life and governing: castration of the masculine.

3. His withdrawal from Afghanistan, abandoning those who served us so loyally, was nauseatingly incompetent and catastrophic. The epitome of a weak father: abandoning his children to violence and death in his fog of confusion, incompetence and self-confidence. This flagrant show of passivity and surrender has emboldened tyrants around the world: Putin got a green light when he saw us pull out. China is being tempted. Iran is building nuclear arms as they know Biden's passivity. The globe is unstable in a way unknown for 75 years because of this feeble president.

2. His betrayal of the unborn in their vulnerability, dependency and powerlessness makes him the iconic Non-Father.

1. A bad Catholic, he is non-filial to the Church: disloyal and disobedient, preferring his own way. A good father must first be a good son. He must imbibe the masculinity of his own father (and father figures) as strong, gentle, just, true, steadfast, protective, chaste, and humble. After a period of being well-fathered, the young man exudes paternity. Biden is a weak father, because he is a disloyal son. If he simply left the Church, in good conscience like Gorsuch or Pence, there would be no problem. But, emblematic of Catholic liberalism, he assumes the posture of moral superiority, pretentiously and piously waving his rosary beads and receiving Communion, while persecuting the Little Sisters of the Poor, forcing Catholics to bake cakes at "gay weddings" and place orphans with gay couples, and leading the genocide of the unborn...all the while carefree, cavalier, smiling and glad-handing in the most profound scandal and sacrilege. Let's not blame Hunter for his problems: he has a bad father who is a bad son as well as a bad president.

Conclusion

We are in trouble. We are  fatherless!

Appendix

On a scale of 1-5 with 1 very weak and 5 very strong, here are my rankings of the US Presidents of my time as father figures. (My evaluation included emotional, moral and policy considerations.)

1  Joe Biden

2  Donald Trump, Bill Clinton

3  Barak Obama, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon

4  Lyndon Johnson, H Bush. Gerald Ford, W. Bush, Harry Truman

5  Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Ronald Regan

If you do the math you will see Republicans average 3.6 and Democrats 3.1. This makes sense: the DNC is more feminine in the best sense but also emasculated. The RNC is less feminine, regrettably; more masculine but sometimes macho in the toxic sense.   

 

June: Sacred Heart or Sexual Liberation? Pride or Pentecost? Letter 2 to My Teen Grandchildren

Yesterday was the feast of St. Charles Lawanga and the Ugandan martyrs. Charles was chief of pages for King Mwanga who was a ritual pedophile. In his position Charles protected the boys from the sexual abuse of the king. Eventually he evoked the regal ire and he was burned to death with a group of his companions. When they were lighting the fire to burn him he said: "It is like you are pouring water on me. Please repent for your sins." He is the patron saint of African youth.

He reminds us of St. Maria Gioretti who protected her chastity to the point of being stabbed multiple times and then forgave her attacker. Similarly St. Maximilian Kolbe in his youth was offered, by our Blessed Mother, the red cup of martyrdom or the white cup of chastity.  He chose both; went on to consecrate his life in purity to Mary; and die a martyr and a hero in Auschwitz. 

We see in these and a litany of saints the conjunction of three qualities of holiness: sexual chastity, courage in the face of suffering, and merciful forgiveness. They go together as a package deal.

We see in Charles and Mwanga that there are two, only two, orientations regarding sexuality: chastity and unchastity. That is the choice that each of us must make. As a result of original sin we are afflicted with concupiscence, disordered sexual feelings, attractions, urges. That we have such troubling feelings cannot be helped. What matters is what we do with them. Our basic choice is for or against chastity: this is a hard binary; there is no compromise or middle position; in the long term, war to the death.

Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit whom we received in baptism and confirmation. My body, masculine or feminine, is sacred and to be revered. I am myself, in my masculinity or femininity, to be revered by myself and others, regardless of my attractions. Sexuality is especially holy because it penetrates to the depths of ones heart, intellect, will and soul. It is the way God chose to create new children, eternal souls. It is the privileged expression of unity between spouses in marriage.

Sins against chastity are sacrilegious because of the sacredness of our sexuality. Sexual sin of abuse is worse than stealing money, or beating him up, of spreading false rumors...because these are more superficial, less deep. This even applies to consensual, affectionate engagement between non-married adults. I may feel completely in love with my partner and wish no harm but objectively violate her and my chastity and leave her and myself. damaged unintentionally. 

So sins against chastity are serious. With the internet and especially among young men the use of pornography with masturbation has become an epidemic. This is serious. This is a sin which must be confessed as self-centered and a violation of the very meaning of sex as union, self-gift, and fruitful.

The chaste life can be difficult, almost impossible for some who suffer loneliness, insecurity, anxiety and can be desperate for relief. For this reason the Catholic Catechism says that the guilt for such sin can be diminished due to the subjective weakness of the person. The Church is quick to forgive in the sacrament of penance.

While sins against chastity are objectively grave, the guilt or culpability is often diminished because of the subjective intent and understanding. Weakness of the flesh in the form of desperate loneliness, isolation, and anxiety as well as overwhelming passions of attraction and euphoria can leave one in a cloud of confusion. Additionally, the seductive influence of a "world" removed from God can leave a conscience that is erroneous and does not even think there is anything wrong with the action. In no arena as much as sex do Jesus' words pertain: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Sexual intercourse outside of marriage violates our purity and that of our partner. Even within marriage, certain acts are inherently wrong: wholesome, holy sex culminates with the release of the seed of life from the male penis in the female vagina in an act that is unitive, open to new life, and blessed by God. Violations include oral, manual, and anal sex (sodomy). These are wrong for everyone, married or single, homosexual or heterosexual. They are wrong in themselves. St. Charles Lawanga and his companions chose to be burned to death rather than partake in these acts. 

June is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: his human/divine heart  which is absolutely pure and suffered to give us new life. This is associated with the Immaculate Heart of Mary which was pure and free of sin from her conception. A third heart is the chaste heart of St. Joseph, really married to Mary, loved her tenderly, reverently and chastely.

June is a magnificent month: sweet temperature, end of school, Maine, Pentecost, weddings, and the three hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We are invited to come close to these three to be under their influence, in all the virtues and especially purity. Difficult as it can be and weak of flesh as many of us are, our Lord gives us nevertheless what we need to grow in chastity: prayer, confession and Eucharist, wholesome family, friends, study, work, activities. But we must choose it and seek it, getting up and moving on when we fall.

This brings us to the sad topic of Gay Pride Month. The message of the LGBTQ+ movement is: the sexual acts performed by homosexuals (manual, anal, oral) are good-true-beautiful and morally equivalent to the unitive/fruitful intercourse of husband and wife within marriage. And so we have parades, dramatic gestures and celebrations to celebrate  "pride" about these acts. 

This is a tremendous scandal as it encourages people to sin. To affirm, applaud, encourage and enable sinful acts is to collaborate in them. It is the sin of scandal: of leading others into sin. A sin of "false witness" against commandment 8 as well as 6 and 9.  Jesus warned that it would be better that one not be born than to lead a little one into sin; to have a grindstone tied around one's neck and be cast into the sea. Pride month is a celebration of sin and impurity.

As we celebrate Pentecost, the culmination of the Catholic year, let us invoke the Holy Spirit:  that we all grow in chastity; that we give true witness to the purity of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, along with Saints Charles, Maria and Max; and that those we love be protected from the falsehood and temptation of unchastity! Come Holy Spirit!